


Ice Cold

by edgarallennope



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Do people even read Fallout fanfictions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I don't ship them very much but you do you, Other, female sole survivor/nick valentine if you want tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 11:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10592667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgarallennope/pseuds/edgarallennope
Summary: “Now, that’s not...oh. Oh, I’m so sorry."Female Sole Survivor walks with Nick through her journey to Vault 111AKA the fic literally nobody asked for but kept running through my head when I was playing the game.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written for the Fallout fandom, but I kept thinking of this and it wasn't leaving me alone.
> 
> When I play video games, particularly RPGs, I emotionally connect so hard, so like, I found myself mourning over a husband I'd known for five minutes (me, a very gay woman), and I genuinely want to be reunited with Shaun. So I put some of my thoughts as the sole survivor in this fic.
> 
> Also worth mentioning I have not finished the game, let alone the main story line. I know it's been out for like two years, I can only just now afford it. 
> 
> And that I did not name my sole survivor Nora, I just know it's the default name if you play as Nate. I named her Ripley (I wanted to do Poe, but It wasn't on the Codsworth list)

Nick never thought he’d find a place he liked almost as much as Diamond City.

 

Of course, no other settlement had the energy and excitement of the great green jewel of the commonwealth, but he had to admit, Sanctuary Hills had something. The hard working people, the rare greenery, the smooth sound of the river running over the rocks; Diamond City would always be his home, but he was growing accustomed to the serenity of the suburbs. Or what was the suburbs. 

 

They had had a particularly hard time, getting rid of a band of raiders who were disturbing a nearby settlement. Who had power armour. And a Fat Man. Nick didn’t want to see anything bigger than a flame for at  _ least  _ a couple of days. So, they had come to Sanctuary Hills. Every now and then, or after a particularly stressful or challenging fight, Nora would come down there to make herself useful; helping to rebuild, planting crops, building defences, despite the fact Sanctuary Hills was probably one of the most well defended settlements in the commonwealth at this point. But Nick understood her need to keep herself busy. He saw how she looked at Shawn's old crib when she found herself with nothing to do; a crib far too small for the son she hadn’t seen grow.

 

Nick sighed, despite his lack of lungs. They knew their next steps, to infiltrate the Institute, but knew it would be suicide to attempt it now, and so they kept themselves strong with odd-jobs from Preston or The Railroad, and Nick’s ongoing search for Eddie Winter. But he knew it must hurt her, to know where her child was, but having no way to make it to him. Hell, he’d dealt with more missing-person cases than he could count, but this was so, so different. Nora was a hell of a gal, he’d say that. Not many people can wake up after 210 years in cryo and become general of the Minutemen right off the bat. She was a survivor, that much was for sure. 

 

He was strolling idly down the road running through the settlement, idly running his thin hand through Dogmeat’s fur as the german shepard ran by, looking across the street to Nora, smiling at her, but then stopped. Nora was completely motionless, and she had dropped the wrench she was holding. His smile quickly faded as he crossed over the street to get to her. She was standing at a clearing between two of the pre-war houses, eyes dead ahead.

 

“Nora? Everything okay there?” He asked as casually as he could. She didn’t break her focus, just staring out, before slowly walking out to the clearing, away from Sanctuary Hills. Nick, startled, followed after her. The path winded down into a dip, and over a small bridge passing through the small forest that surrounded the settlement. 

 

“It was nearly halloween.” Nick looked towards her, not saying anything. “It was my favourite time of year; my birthday is just before Halloween, Nate always said it explained a lot about me.”

 

If he had a stomach, it would have dropped. It was always jarring to think that to her, all this had been just a couple of months ago, when the trees still grew leaves, which would have turned such beautiful shades of orange, yellow and red. He remembered. Or rather, he could see the  _ real  _ Nick Valentines memories of them. They continued to trudge up the hill, and a large, destroyed billboard came into view.

 

‘Prepare for the Future!’

 

Oh.

 

He knew where they were.

 

“There was so much  _ panic _ .” Nora continued. “I was just a law school graduate, but Nate, he had been in the army, he  _ knew  _ what chaos was, and yet I’d never seen him so scared. He never had liked being a soldier.” She huffed, almost a laugh, but not a happy one. “Everywhere we heard different escape plans, people planning to get as far away as possible, people who couldn’t get to…” She trailed off, swallowing. 

 

They had reached the iron gate, and hesitantly stepped through, to what Nick knew now to be the infamous Vault 111. Old construction machinery was scattered around, rusted and lifeless, and in the centre, a large circular platform. From here, there was a pretty nice view of Sanctuary Hills, and Nora stepped up onto it pointing out into the distance. 

 

“There. It was right there, we saw it. The bomb dropped right there. Just as we saw it drop, we started lowering down, it was so, so close. We shouldn’t have made it, but we did.”

 

“You saw the bombs drop.” Nick repeated, dumbstruck. “Not many people can claim that.”

 

“I can hardly describe it. It was terrifying and violent and shattering, but I couldn’t turn away. Even from here, I could feel the heat, I could  _ smell  _ it, feel the force of it pushing me back as we went underground.” She still didn’t look at him, just staring out at the commonwealth, as if she could still  _ see _ the mushroom cloud. Her gaze shifted and she looked over at a small control booth. She barely waited ten seconds before making her decision, and ran up to the booth, pressing a few buttons on the panel, and Nick felt the ground beneath him begin to shift and groan.

 

“Hey, now, are you sure this is such a great idea?” Nick tried to reason, but he got no reply. She strode down to the platform just as it began it’s descent, not looking at her partner. The ride down was slow and unstable, but Nora didn’t seem to notice. They landed into an eerie kind of silence Nick had experienced only a few times; a macabre, isolating silence that can only come from a place with absolutely no life. Without stopping, Nora continued on down the platform, and through the corridors of the vault, Nick walking a few paces behind, until they came to a room lined with containers, and he watched as Nora stopped at the end of the line and looked into one, before going to the control panel by it, and Nick hurried over to her.

 

“Now, that’s not...oh. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

 

Inside was who Nick now knew to be Nate, frozen not just from rigor mortis, with a grizzly gunshot wound to the head, which Nick had seen happen as a host in the Memory Den, but this was so much worse. He turned to look at Nora, who was starting to tremble.

 

“So stupid, I mean, they didn’t even  _ try  _ to make it not look like cryogen.”

 

“Hey, Nora-”

 

“A  _ decontamination chamber _ , god I’m such a fucking  _ idiot _ .”

 

“Now, that’s not-”

 

“I tried so so  _ hard  _ to get out, I just had to stand there and watch, maybe if I had taken Shaun instead of Nate,  _ he  _ would be here and I wouldn’t be fucking this up!”

 

“Now just hold one one second there, doll!” She stopped and looked at him, her eyes full of tears, and  _ anger _ . “Do you have any idea what you’ve accomplished? You became General of the Minutemen, reviving it from doom and giving the Commonwealth  _ hope  _ again, you walked the Road To Freedom, practically alone, and made it into The Railroad after  _ one goddamn job _ , you walked across The Glowing Sea, killed a Deathclaw after being out of cryo for, what, half an hour? Hell, you even made Diamond City Radio bearable to listen to, and what’s more you’ve  _ saved my circuits  _ on multiple occasions. You’ve come so, so far in such a short amount of time, and after just that long, you’ve come close to solving a mystery that’s plagued the commonwealth for years! You’re my friend, and I’m so proud of you. And I know that he would be too.”

 

Nora stared at him for a little longer, before the tears brimming in her eyes finally spilled down her cheeks, and her face crumpled up as her knees buckled. Nick swooped down and caught her before she fell, lowering her to the ground with him into a gentle, loose embrace as he let her cry herself out, running what he hoped was a soothing hand down her back, with his more fleshy hand, as she clung to his trench coat, leaving wet patches where she pressed her face into it.

 

It took her a couple of minutes to compose herself; she had never been much of a cryer, but it turned out watching her husband die and being flung into a post-apocalyptic was her point. She pushed herself away from Nick, smiling at him, then looked back at Nate.

 

“I’ll give him a proper burial. Not today, but I will. I need time, and his body will preserve here. I’ll bury him, right in the garden of the house we shared, and when I get my son back,” Nick smiled,  _ when, not if,  _ “I’ll take him there and tell him how brave his father was.”

 

“And I’ll be there to make sure he knows what an amazon his mother is, too. Not that he needs  _ me  _ to tell him that.” Nick said, smiling, as he got up and gave her his hand to help her up. She took it, and used the momentum to pull Nick into a brief, tight, hug.

“Thank you, Nick. For everything. I really wouldn’t be here without you.”

 

“It’s what I do best, Doll. Always here to help a friend in need.”

 

They walked up through the tunnels, through the various defences, until they came to what would have been the Overseer’s office, when a case at the corner of the room caught Nora’s eye.

 

“Hold one one second.” She said, crouching down towards it, giving a low whistle at the impressive weapon she saw hidden away. She examined the lock and smiled. “I bet I can just about crack this, give me a second.”

 

As the lock came free in her hands, she pulled out what she found to be a Cryo Gun, and her eyes went wide with childlike glee, her first reaction being to freeze the fan on the Overseer’s desk. Nick, threw his head back laughing. 

 

“Woah, okay, be careful with that thing. There’s a time and a place and neither’s here.”

 

“I know, I know! I’ll put it away.” Nora grinned. “Two months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to pick that lock, or pretty much any lock for that matter; I was never particularly deviant as a kid. Now i can crack anything you stick me in front of. I’m getting better and better, and I know I’m going to have my son back, soon.”

 

“Damn right, kid.”

  
They walked down through the tunnel, and to the elevator, slowly ascending from the darkness of the quiet, desolate vault to the Commonwealth in the midday sunshine, and back towards Sanctuary Hills.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me if you liked it or not! Constructive criticism is always welcome.


End file.
